Korematsu v. United States

Impact

Roosevelt's executive order and the subsequent Korematsu decision were devastating to the Japanese American community on the West Coast. Like other Americans during the war, they were already subject to hardships and sacrifices, but they also were forced to leave their homes and businesses to be put in camps, where they were often treated like the enemy. Meanwhile, propaganda campaigns that aimed to bolster the morale of civilians and increase support for the war often utilized racist and xenophobic portrayals of the Japanese. This made it more difficult for the Nisei and Sensei and translated into an unfortunate degree of public support for the internment camps.

Japanese Americans in Hawaii fared better than their counterparts on the Pacific Coast and Alaska. Only about two thousand were taken into custody or relocated. This was because the military and the civilian government of the territory argued that the Nisei were critical to the war effort and local economy.

Even while they were in internment camps Japanese American males were subject to military conscription, and more than twenty thousand served in the US military during the war, while approximately one hundred women joined the voluntary Women's Army Corps, and several hundred volunteered as military nurses. The US Army's 442nd Regimental Combat Team was made up of Japanese Americans, and eventually more than fourteen thousand Nisei and Sensei served in the unit. It was the most decorated infantry unit in the history of the US Army, winning more than eighteen thousand awards over a two-year period, including twenty-one Medals of Honor, the highest award for bravery in the US military. Many members of the unit would later attribute its success to efforts by the soldiers to prove their loyalty to the United States. The 442nd Regimental Combat Team and other Japanese American units served only in Europe, not in the Pacific.

Roosevelt rescinded Executive Order 9066 in December 1944 as it became clear that the United States and its allies were winning the war. The internees were allowed to return home, although many had lost their businesses or dwellings. All of the camps were dismantled within a year of the end of the war.

In 1980 Fred Korematsu once again challenged his conviction in court. In 1984 the US District Court for the Northern District of California overturned Korematsu's earlier conviction on the ground that the government had willingly suppressed evidence concerning the military necessity for interning Japanese Americans during the war. The second Korematsu case, however, merely addressed its particular facts, leaving the law of the 1944 case in place. In 1988 Congress authorized payments of $20,000 each to 82,219 survivors of the internment camps after the government issued an official apology, but Korematsu v. United States remained on the books as “good law.”

On September 24, 2017, President Donald J. Trump issued Executive Proclamation 9645, which restricted the entry into the United States of citizens from eight countries for security reasons. The prohibition was challenged in court, and in the case Hawaii v. Trump, on June 26, 2018, the Supreme Court allowed the policy to go into effect. However, in the 5–4 decision, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, the Court repudiated the Korematsu decision. The opinion asserted that history had determined that the decision was flawed and that it was time to recognize the injustice of Korematsu.